Re: XP doesn't see HDDs
The other drives are just data drives but the Windows install disk was never the disk containing the MBR to my knowledge as it was not on SATA 1 but SATA 3 if I remember correctly.
Let me tell you the whole story. I got a processor upgrade AMD Phenom II 840 as well as a new GTX 560 ti video card. Everything seemed ok but when playing Mafia 2 I was getting strange missing texture issues. The game came with the card so I don't know if it was just an issue with the game, card, video driver for XP or a combination. When you first start playing the game everything works fine but after several minutes you would get missing textures and the game would eventually crash. I also was having the occasional random system lockup after the machine had been on for hours and hours but I think it would only happen after trying Mafia 2 and then the game crashing. I would alt tab to desktop and kill Mafia 2 in the task manager as it stated it had stopped responding, because it had.
Anyways wasn't sure what the issue was did all the driver uninstall, driversweeper, reinstall, blah blah blah nothing worked. I unhooked my PC and reseated the vid card, processor and memory. I also switch around the 2 6 pin connectors providing supplemental power to the vid card. Physically moved my hard drives around to make more room as when I first put the card in the heat sink was touching the metal housing on one of my drives though not making any contact with electrical components on either device so at first I figured it was ok but after thinking about it knew it wasn't proper and decided to fix the layout proper. Unhooked my Sata cables but forgot how they went back. Hooked the machine back up and wouldn't boot. Got half way through the Windows logo and would blue screen stating possible hard drive corruption or suggesting removing any new hardware or doing a chkdsk. Tried booting in safe mode and got the same blue screen so this was looking bad. Did a chkdsk /p after booting from the recovery console and that didn't help. re arranged SATA cables and that didn't help. Then started hooking up one drive at a time and that didn't help. Went to bed. Got up and swapped the 2 6 pin connectors providing supplemental video power and got the machine to boot. Only had the Windows installation disk plugged in at this time which I don't remember having a MBR on it but I think somewhere during this processes the chkdsk /p or /r which I had run having various drives hooked up might have put one on the XP install disk but I don't know if that can actually happen.
Anyways checking the drives with Ubunu Live I noticed that the install disk and another disk both had ID 0,0 and the other non XP installation drive had a small extra partition on it besides the NTFS which I figured was a MBR but as I said the XP installation disk will boot even if the second disk that had the original MBR is not plugged in.
I'm trying a Fixmbr, rebooting and XP is running chkdsk automatically. Keeping my fingers crossed so I'll let you know.
